Legend:

Building GHC on FreeBSD is currently supported on 8.1-RELEASE or later, on {{{i386}}} (x86) and {{{amd64}}} (x86_64) architectures. One might be able to build GHC on different architectures and earlier versions but they are not maintained actively. Note that 8.1-RELEASE is used for the FreeBSD nightly builds ([http://darcs.haskell.org/ghcBuilder/builders/pgj/ amd64 head], [http://darcs.haskell.org/ghcBuilder/builders/pgj2/ i386 head], [http://darcs.haskell.org/ghcBuilder/builders/pgj-freebsd-amd64-stable/ amd64 stable], [http://darcs.haskell.org/ghcBuilder/builders/pgj-freebsd-i386-stable/ i386 stable]).

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''Note that this section is intended for developers and early adopters primarily. If you are just want to install GHC on your system, simply use the `devel/hs-haskell-platform` port instead. This port does all the things described below for you. It is usually kept updated to match the latest Haskell Platform specifications.''

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''Note that this section is intended for developers and early adopters primarily. If you are just want to install GHC on your system, simply use the [http://www.freshports.org/devel/hs-haskell-platform devel/hs-haskell-platform] port instead. This port does all the things described below for you. It is usually kept updated to match the latest Haskell Platform specifications.''

Probably it is possible to use a [http://www.haskell.org/ghc/download_ghc_7_6_2#freebsd vanilla binary distribution] to bootstrap the build, but one must note that it is built on 8.1-RELEASE, hence it will require installing `misc/compat8x` in order to make it work on 9.x and later systems.

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Probably it is possible to use a [http://www.haskell.org/ghc/download_ghc_7_6_2#freebsd vanilla binary distribution] to bootstrap the build, but one must note that it is built on 8.1-RELEASE, hence it will require installing [http://www.freshports.org/misc/compat8x misc/compat8x] in order to make it work on 9.x and later systems.

Here is a random list of thoughts about things that are good to know when working on FreeBSD.

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- The FreeBSD base system contains GCC and the GNU toolchain (at least for the time being) but they are not or only slowly updated. GCC is technically stuck at version 4.2.1 which may not be optimal for building GHC these days. Hence it is highly recommended to use the toolchain (`devel/binutils`) and GCC (`lang/gcc`) from the Ports Collectiom instead.

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- The FreeBSD base system contains GCC and the GNU toolchain (at least for the time being) but they are not or only slowly updated. GCC is technically stuck at version 4.2.1 which may not be optimal for building GHC these days. Hence it is highly recommended to use the toolchain ([http://www.freshports.org/devel/binutils devel/binutil]) and GCC ([http://www.freshports.org/lang/gcc lang/gcc]) from the Ports Collection instead.

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- The FreeBSD base system is shipped with a version of `ncurses` but this may not be the latest. Unfortunately, when `devel/ncurses` is installed one should add some extra lines to `mk/build.mk` to tell GNU make we want to use `ncurses` from `$LOCALBASE` (see above) instead, otherwise `terminfo` (which uses `ncurses`) becomes linked to `ncurses` in the base:

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- The FreeBSD base system is shipped with a version of `ncurses` but this may not be the latest. Unfortunately, when [http://www.freshports.org/devel/ncurses devel/ncurses] is installed one should add some extra lines to `mk/build.mk` to tell GNU make we want to use `ncurses` from `$LOCALBASE` (see above) instead, otherwise `terminfo` (which uses `ncurses`) becomes linked to `ncurses` in the base:

- The GHC source code have an in-tree version of `libffi` and `gmp` which may work by accident -- especially if the version of `libgmp.so` and `libffi.so` matches the version installed by the ports. But using them is not recommended as they could result in various strange build and run-time errors. See the `configure` options to work around them.

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- Building GHC sources and Haskell sources in general could be sped up by setting up a `tmpfs(5)` partition. (This is not created by the default install.) Just replace the `/tmp` parition with a tmpfs-backed entry in `/etc/fstab`:

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- Building GHC sources and Haskell sources in general could be sped up by setting up a [http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=tmpfs&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+9.1-stable&arch=default&format=html tmpfs(5)] partition. (This is not created by the default install.) Just replace the `/tmp` partition with a tmpfs-backed entry in `/etc/fstab`: